Image via WikipediaThe Idea That Drug Addicts Should Be Treated, Not Locked Up, Is Making Waves
Hundreds of doctors, politicians, researchers and frontline workers met with drug users and ex-users in Austin, Texas, in December to openly talk about drug use. But instead of reaffirming their commitment to the decades-long war on drugs, the eighth National Harm Reduction Conference will feature discussions on opening needle exchanges, legalizing and regulating the drug trade, and overdose prevention methods.
"What we do in (the United States) is make drugs as unsafe as they possibly can be, and we do that through laws, which means that, if you get busted with drugs, you go to prison for a long time. And that's designed as a deterrent to make people stop using drugs, which obviously it isn't," said Allan Clear, executive director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, which runs the national conference. "We do things like take syringes out of circulation, which has caused epidemics of hepatitis and HIV. So harm reduction is a way of trying to make drug use safer for people who use drugs, without demanding that they stop using drugs."
Harm reduction can include a range of services from needle exchanges and condom distribution to safe consumption sites and access to addiction services such as methadone and buprenorphine treatments and detox facilities.
Supported by the United Nations and over 93 countries worldwide, harm reduction remains controversial. While over half of the 158 countries where drug use has been reported say they support harm reduction, only 82 countries have needle exchanges, just 73 provide opiate substitution therapies like methadone, and a measly eight countries have safe drug consumption facilities. There are only two safe consumption facilities in North America, both in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
America in Decline: Why Germans Think We're Insane
The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less -- right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical -- the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.
( The U.S. 'spends its money' in a system of institutional 'insurance' fraud )
The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave.
Memo to Media: We Are Not "Needed" in Iraq
( The statement about being 'needed' is so lame in any case that I 'ran with it' in comments )
2010: A Precedent-Setting Year In the Fight Against Coal
In the last 25 months not one coal-fired power plant broke ground for construction in the United States. In 2010 alone a total of 38 proposed plants were erased from the drawing board, the most ever recorded in a single year. Utilities also announced 12,000 MW in coal plant retirements -- or enough power to bring electricity to a whopping 12 million American households.
Image via Wikipedia
The EPA has also not been as friendly to this portion of the energy sector as in years past, placing most coal permits for mountaintop removal on hold and even recommending a veto of the proposed Spruce Mine in West Virginia, which would be the largest of its kind in the country.
The Soy and Other 'Natural' Food Products in Your Cabinet May Contain a Dangerous Neurotoxin
All too often it's the companies playing the "natural" card that are doing the most unnatural things to your food.
Hexane is a highly flammable EPA-listed air pollutant that is used in the manufacture of cleaning agents, glues, roof sealer, automobile tires, energy bars, veggie burgers, and soy, corn, and canola oils. If these food products are not certified organic, some of the ingredients have probably been processed with hexane, no matter how many times the word "natural" is stamped on the package. Since hexane is used in the manufacturing process, it's not listed as an ingredient in the foods it helps produce, though residues find their way into the finished product. The European Union has strict standards for acceptable hexane residue levels in soy and oilseed products, but in the U.S., there are no such limits.
What Is in Fast Food? A Newly Discovered Reason to Avoid Fast Food
A new study shows that toxicperfluoroalkyls, which are used in surface protection treatments and coatings to keep grease from leaking through fast food wrappers, are being ingested by people through their food and showing up as contaminants in blood.Perfluoroalkyls are a hazardous class of stable, synthetic chemicals that repel oil, grease and water.
As reported by University of Toronto researchers, the chemicals studied in human blood, urine and feces were polyfluoroalkyl phosphate esters (PAPs), which are the breakdown products of the perfluorinated carboxylic acids (PFCAs) used in coating the food wrappers. Scientists said the exposure to humans through this means "should be considered as a significant indirect source of PFCA."
Rigged Elections
elite selection of candidates:
control of the US is too valuable for elites to let voters decide
Obama’s Afghanistan Review: A Whitewash of a Disastrous Occupation
According to the Obama administration, nothing can happen in the U.S. war in Afghanistan that doesn’t mean good news. If violence rises, it’s because “we’re taking the fight to the enemy.” The Pentagon must be taking a lot of fighting to whoever they’re calling the enemy – this year alone the war has killed over 2500 Afghan civilians, and almost 500 U.S. troops and more than 200 other NATO forces have died too.
As is recognized by the 60% of people in the U.S. who understand that the war in Afghanistan is “not worth fighting,” this is a war we cannot win and cannot afford. There is no military solution – we’ve heard that for years now, from the very leaders orchestrating the war, in the Pentagon, in Congress, in the White House. And yet, the military battle goes on, despite its inevitable failure.
Smith Electric Trucks Could Transform U.S. Shipping
Newton world’s largest electric delivery vehicle with a top speed of 50 MPH and a range in excess of
100 miles on a single charge
The $550 billion in direct government welfare payments for the oil and coal industries does not include all of the indirect government subsidies that these industries receive. It does not include the cost of soldiers protecting oil fields in Iraq; or the cost of treating respiratory illnesses caused by particulate emissions; or the cost of free liability insurance for oil and coal companies (in the form of limitations on their liability for harm to third parties); or the cost to individuals who lose their livelihoods when oil gushes uncontrollably into the Gulf 
Image by WanderingtheWorld (www.LostManProject.com) via Flickrof Mexico or the Niger Delta.
But let's stick with the very tangible number of $550 billion in cold, hard cash for now. What would happen if we took that $550 billion away from oil and coal, and invested that cash in clean, sustainable energy technologies instead?
Image by WanderingtheWorld (www.LostManProject.com) via Flickrof Mexico or the Niger Delta.But let's stick with the very tangible number of $550 billion in cold, hard cash for now. What would happen if we took that $550 billion away from oil and coal, and invested that cash in clean, sustainable energy technologies instead?
A Holiday Greeting
Pecan trees in Texas are dying too:
So are orange trees in Florida:
So are butternut trees in Canada:
So are apple trees and mistletoe in England:
Almond trees in California:
Maple trees from Ohio...
...to Vermont:
Douglas Fir in the Pacific Northwest:
Cork and Oak in Portugal:
Hemlocks in the southeast:
Horse Chestnuts in England:
kiwi trees in New Zealand and Italy:
salt marshes on Cape Cod:
which is especially interesting given the latest excuse for marsh plants dying around the Gulf -that the oil spill has intensified a fungus:
http://blog.al.com/live/2010/12/oil_may_have_strengthened_fung.html
Trees are dying off all over the west in apparently healthy forests with no evidence of beetles:
"The study, led by authors from the United States Geological Survey and published in the journal Science, found the rate of tree deaths has more than doubled in the last few decades even in apparently healthy, well-established forests. Death rates have increased at all elevations, and for trees of all sizes and types, leading the researchers to worry that the U.S. may soon suffer massive and sudden die-backs of its seemingly healthy forests, a cascading effect that could release carbon dioxide into the air, further speeding global warming."
"Scientists have already witnessed mass tree deaths in American forests due to beetle infestations. Periodic outbreaks of Mountain Pine Beetle in Colorado, for example, has killed an estimated 7.4 million trees in the past decade. But the Science study, titled "Widespread Increase of Tree Mortality Rates in the Western United States," is the first to show A CREEPING DEATH RATE IN ANCIENT, WELL-ESTABLISHED CONIFEROUS FORESTS WITH NO EVIDENCE OF EPIDEMIC INFESTATIONS."
Does anyone see a pattern here? Trees all over the world are dying, and it's being blamed on insects, fungus and disease. Which is ludicrous, because scientific research has established three irrefutable facts that are crucial to this discussion:
1. ozone damages vegetation - anything that has to photosynthesize
2. the levels of background tropospheric ozone are inexorably rising
3. trees and crops exposed to ozone are more likely to succumb to insects, disease, fungus, and extreme weather. They lose their natural immunity that kept the presence of pathogens in balance. They have AIDS, in other words.
It's about time that the experts start looking at the big picture and identify the underlying cause for trees of all species to be dying off, while there is still (a dwindling amount of) time left to rescue some survivors and propagate more.
The Empire's New Middle East Map
using religious and ethnic divisions to split Iraq, Iran and Saudi Arabia to control their oil rich provinces
Creeping Martial Law
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